The little-known history of the k. u. k. Aviation troops, told in 50 biographies.

The visual memory of the First World War includes cannons, positions in the high mountains and soldiers fighting against masses of snow and avalanches. The fact that this mountain world on the Tyrolean front was also the backdrop for a fierce air war is far less well known. Not only was Tyrol a theater of this air war, but soldiers from North and South Tyrol, Trentino and Vorarlberg were deployed as members of the Austro-Hungarian air force in various theaters of war as pilots, observer officers and ground personnel. The majority of these people - including numerous pioneers of aviation - are still completely unknown.

This multi-volume collective biographical work thus closes a major gap in research on the First World War and the social history of the military in western Austria: for the first time, the members of the Imperial and Royal Air Force are presented from a historical perspective. For the first time, the members of the Austro-Hungarian Air Force from the historical Tyrol and Vorarlberg are comprehensively examined and presented biographically. The presentation is based on file studies in the war archives in Vienna and in the regional archives as well as numerous previously unknown documents and photographs from private collections. In addition to the collective biographical study, the work also contains for the first time a comprehensive and concise account of the air war on the Tyrolean front and in the western Austrian hinterland.